Sandria Darque
Ever since Sandria Darque and her brother were children they have been able to raise themselves above the ground, and no matter how hard they tried, they were never able to do anything more. While Sandria has been satisfied with her ability, her brother hungered for the power of Godhood. Through the psychic bond she shares with her sibling, Sandria acts as Darque’s familiar and grounds him to mortal existence, as a force as great as the Darque Power would consume him were she not present to anchor him. After her death at the hands of Anton Quigley and resurrection through her brother’s dark arts in 1895, Sandria required great energy to maintain her existence, so Darque continually transfused her with Darque Power to keep her from dissipating into intangibility and thus ensure his own survival. Ever since then, Sandria’s natural state made her appear as an intangible phantom, but by expending additional energy she could make herself solid wherever she willed it. Sandria occasionally opposed her brother’s wishes and worked to prevent or delay his mastery of the Darque Power, as, despite their bond, they were separate and different entities, and her keener sense of the future allowed her to anticipate more of what was to come than he did. Learning of Darque’s plan to steal the life force of those who willingly died for him to increase his powers, Sandria – who could never stop him but would try to hold him in check if she did not believe in what he was doing – warned him that he threatened to change not only the world but them as well. The first time that Sandria laid eyes on Jack Boniface was when Clemenceau and Marty, two of her brother’s minions brought him to one of their manors in New Orleans, where Darque promised to grant him his desire for his music to shine in exchange of his willingly servitude. Though Darque believed that he easily persuaded Jack, Sandria trusted that he noticed that he never persuaded him to say yes. Shortly, Sandria watched from the sidelines as Jack fought Clemenceau to reach her brother, and during the brawl, as he recited a series of lyrics from the song the Seventh Son in response to Darque’s description of his power and Darque noticed that he seemed to draw strength from them, she asked her brother if he feared him. Admitting that perhaps he did and that he savored the new emotion, Darque set the house ablaze as they fled. The following evening at the St. Louis No. 1 Cemetery, Sandria startled Jack while he chased Paul N’Dour and his wife through the crypts and told him to remember the day of his death, a riddle that left him in doubt while she vanished back into the shadows. Later, at Darque’s manor, Darque revealed that once his Bloodrunners died he would gain ultimate power and asked Sandria if she would try to stop him, to which she replied that she would do whatever she choose to do as always, which he surmised to mean that she would try to use the Shadowman, who he would try to kill. The next day, as Jack started his death run after Darque fulfilled his promise to make his music shine, Sandria revealed her attempt to save him expecting to anger her brother, but instead he mused that if Jack survived it would ignite a small spark of interest in his tedious existence. While Darque lost himself in a reverie, Sandria sensed a rent in the fabric of his grand design when Jack solved her riddle and remembered that Elya told him he would not die until 1999, a memory that broke Darque’s spell over him. Watching Darque awaken from his trance and fall on the ground, Sandria told him that Jack had decided not to die, and warned him that she would oppose his quest for ultimate power. Reminding Darque that they had both spent several lifetimes studying the arcane, Sandria wondered why he used his knowledge to exert his will, the most banal of human ideas, and he told her that he did it because it amused him and because he could. As Darque walked away certain that Jack would no longer matter after the meeting in the air, when he no longer would absorb energy but energy would emanate from him, Sandria warned him one last time not to seek the universe for power lest if found him, but he ignored her and left. Two nights later in the bayou, as Jack arrived at the meeting in the air with Scott, who he fooled into taking him there, Sandria appeared on their boat and told him that her brother plotted to use the energy from the Bloodrunner’s deaths to gain access to an entryway into worlds without end. Warning Jack that her brother could not become a God, Sandria assured him that she had seen that Darque did not know he was there, and urged him to stop his ascension once he reached out to his vessel, then she left. Following Darque’s defeat, Sandria silently watched Jack as he swam to shore and found Scott safely lying on the ground, and then, despite his insistence that she tell him who she was and how she survived her alleged death 15 years earlier, she vanished without a word. After Jack left New Orleans, Sandria followed him to New York and stole his bike to get his attention, then, after leading him through multiple chases and destroying the bike, she revealed herself and told him that it was time for him to go back home as it was getting lonesome there without him and they missed him. Days later, at the St. Louis No.1 Cemetery, Sandria confronted Darque over his enlistment of a group of New Age Nazis to kill Jack and those who dealt directly with him. Unable to attend the ceremony due to a Coven block that would have drained his powers, Darque, who shared a slight psionic link with Jack that in times of crisis gave him a dim awareness of what he was doing, sensed strong emanations from the bayou and became aware that Anjenetta Grampion was trying to exorcised a demon from Jack. Aware that neither Jack nor his benefactors realized just how powerful he could become, Darque could not allow him to harness the Darque power or escape from a virus that he created to limit his power. Sandria later accompanied Darque to the Paradiso Theater, where they waited for Herbert Kramer, an Aerosmith groupie who was desperate to become Steven Tyler that made a deal with Darque, who offered to make his darkest desires happen in exchange for his obedience. Category: Shadowman Category: Characters